By upcycling household items with a little paint and glue, you can quickly add some Halloween spirit to your mantel. Experiment with colors beyond the traditional orange and black for a chic alternative look; maybe even go for a monochrome palette. Try your hand at one of these simple projects to spruce up any corner needing some Halloween style.

I painted some tin cans with matte black paint, then added some white roses, a big faux spider and some old paperbacks with the spines facing the wall. Sticks gathered from outside and painted black provide something to hang the garland from.

There should be no sticky sides remaining now. Fold the sides together and trace the outline of one half of a simple bat design. Cut along the lines through both sides of the tape. Unfold to reveal complete bat shapes.

Continue the process until you reach the desired length. Then hang the garland from your mantel or banister.

1. Upcycled magazine bookend. Find a stack of old magazines and tape them together. Using a flat paintbrush, paint the sides of the pages with an acrylic shimmery gold. Allow the pages to dry, then add a pattern. I chose a simple chevron-like pattern.

Tip: Make sure to use issues of the same magazine for a consistent, flat surface.

This DIY project can be repurposed later on in another part of your home.

3. Ghostly white garland. I used a few fallen branches from a backyard tree for this garland, but any similar leaf will work fine. You can also change up this DIY project with a different color or foliage.

Measure the width of your mantel, including how far you'd like the garland to drop on both sides. Gather branches from outside and wash and dry them.

Cut some grapevine wire according to your measurements and begin securing branches to it. After your garland is complete, move your project outside and coat the branches in white spray paint. Once the branches are dry, flip them over and spray the remaining leaves. Repeat until your garland is covered. And of course, you can always use the foliage unpainted.

Note: Lock the end of the branch to the grapevine wire first for a more natural look and sturdiness. Each item displayed can easily be adjusted to match your home's color scheme.

Sorry, hate to say something negative, but none of these I find appealing--nor do I have most of the items necessary to craft them. I'd suggest building a beautiful wreath from what you have in your garden, local park or friends yard: colorful leaves, dried pods, sprigs of greenery, a few small gourds and even a little plastic bat or two, strategically placed on a small wreath, is simple and autumnal.

I love the ingenuity at work here and will happily make a bat garland with the kids - they'll love it! I also like the idea of spraying the laurel leaves white, that bit of decor can work for Christmas as well. If you wanted to be fancier, you could add gold or silver glitter to it. Thanks for the great ideas.

A friend of mine used old brown grocery bags and monofilament to create a huge bat colony flying thru his house! Some were still "sleeping," hanging upside down in the front hallway, and the rest were strung thru all the rooms. It was a lot of work and time but cheap and VERY effective!

My children and I used their abundance of plastic bugs, snakes, spiders, and frogs to make a wreath. We got a grapevine wreath and wired the critters on with green wire that I had for tying up garden plants. Which reminds me, I need to get that hung before the season is over!

Hi rgillenwater, do you happen to have any pictures of your house in the Smokey Ash color you were considering for your home? We want to do that but there are no pictures anywhere of the finished product! Thank you!

I like the traditional orange and black, but also love purple and black for Halloween as well as a combination of black and white and gold and white. This year I'm going to mix purple and orange lights.

Lordy......it was once as simple as a carved pumpkin sitting on a dinner plate with a candle inside, a pillowcase to haul the candy home, and a big ol' white sheet for a ghost costume. Seriously that easy. But alas, in those days, Halloween was a one day "thing" : )!

Jan, I agree! I loved Halloween as a kid, but there was no build up, no decorating, no expectations, just our normal harvest season activities and then a last minute costume and homemade treats from our neighbors. I really miss those days.

Jan Moyer and Dutchwag...you're both so right but I have just spent the day at the craft store with my daughter and grandson gathering materials to make mardi-gras style masquerade masks for my dining table. What a change a half century makes...lol.

What I miss about Halloween, which was my favorite holiday for a long time, is the elaborate OUTDOOR decorations and efforts people made. I still remember this one block in San Diego that really went all out. They rigged dummies that would drop down from the trees to be hanged as kids would walk up the path, or sheet ghosts would fly across the yard; bats would swoop down at you, fingers would grab at your ankles from the bushes, cobwebs would caress your face. Each year it was a little different. These are things you would have to find now at commercial haunted houses. It was free, it was scary and thrilling AND you got tons of free candy. Now, most kids go "trick-or-treating" at malls and no one bothers to decorate their homes. :(

I was staying with friends at Halloween one year, and we decided to decorate on the spur of the moment. So I cut bats out of the kids' black construction paper and stuck them to the front window panes with Saran Wrap. It worked like a charm - and they didn't even need to clean the windows afterwards.

Broquet, me ,too! Keep it going! For four years until 2000, we and our 2 sons lived in a small town in the countryside of N. J. that really put on a traditional neighborhood & downtown show. Their work and designing, creating ways to turn their old homes into haunted houses, with incredible skill was amazing : one house had people in trees gliding down a wire (safely attached) moaning, draped, so it appeared he/she was real, not for the little kids for sure! Every porch along the main streets would be full-blown scary, some milder for the young ones, but you could always find one with a welcoming costumed soul with candy and a coven-like kettle "afire", yet sometimes there was one person dressed in scary, home-designed attire that was motionless , looking like "it" was made from cloth and stuffing, etc., that could suddenly come to life, bringing shouts of surprise and laughter. My favorite: a large, classic old home not in town, rather out on several acres, just above our home,owned by a couple that I wish I had known sooner. We met Halloween night, along with our kids, who were already in awe of the outdoor creations put up gradually since October 1 or so.They were traditionally scary, and designed w/ great effort. Inside I found they had turned this gorgeous estate home into a specially designed Halloween home, with candles and webs, spiders and creatures around the beautiful interior; we had to laugh at a large creature spewing smoke like a dragon in a side room full of fog. They admitted they were "addicted"to this tradition, collecting new pieces yearly for Halloween-month, like the smoke/fog machines inside and made or re-designed outdoor-hanging, realistic figures , with a "grave yard", complete with stones and markers they dug in, with names and dates they had made, alongside the horror movie-like hand sticking up from the earth. I did not know this neighbor up the hill from our old Victorian house, (which I found inspirational in itself to decorate, albeit in a simpler way). We were pretty creative with lots of candles, webs, bats, pumpkins along our entrance drive, and always created our costumes yearly! YES we DO still even now get in the mood, wondering doesn't everyone? Why not? It's FUN for the grown ups and kids alike. We attempt to create an atmosphere of scariness in our yard,(we are now near the beach),without any elaborate moving elements or "over-the-top stuff" like fake blood in sight, so as not to totally scare the 4 and 5 year-olds away. Local kids know our house near their elementary school, yet still I notice only several groups with their folks will come by, doing the traditional trick or treating door-to-door, before or after the church or school party( as you say , is more common place these days). I do know our efforts are seen and appreciated. I often hear children's comments and laughter as they walk or bike by, noticing the yellow warning signs and "caution tape" around our entrance, or perhaps the dozens of candles and various touches (real candles inside and battery ones outside ), or the windows with skull faces attached inside the glass(skulls and such, on special clinging plastic I found at Party City, classic, and easy to remove & re-usable!), or the spooky bats, "demons" and figures draped in black, we hang from the huge cedar tree center front yard and on our flag staff! Now by the door is a huge pumpkin lit by a night light I found one year and added to our collection of things. My family has always loved Halloween. My husband and I dress up every year, usually using a theme for a party,or at least for the day and /or night if we are home. My sister and I both were art majors/grads~even though we may do different things now, the creative side always comes out in various ways and forms of work and decorating, especially for the fun and spirit of Halloween. It is an ancient historical event after all, even if we are not following as perhaps our ancestors and Druids once did

same, we kept our farm of 20 yrs. when we moved out of state; still go back, no we couldn't get any at all to come but friends and friends of kids! Fun to string orange lights and pumpkins on our fence posts at entrance....still fun for me, is what it comes down to!

@diyer59... this is one of the most perfect examples of why old posts should be archived or deleted or at the very least, have the original date posted under the title. Never even considered this was a thread from last year until read your post. Thanks!

oh, JAC, come alive and have some fun!! It doesn't have to be complex, maybe you just don't like Halloween? I get it cause had a friend who didn't....I would send her little daughter a box of goodies to decorate with and a pumpkin! The fall wreath w/ plastic bats? Not plastic bats, just save the lovely wreath for AFTER Halloween, get w/ the program here, or not, but we want to have fun! No worries! Simple, simple can create an atmosphere others might like

Careful using Dollar Store crows for Halloween decoration if you have cats...one of mine thought it was real and I woke up to feathers everywhere and a "dead" bird feet up in the kitchen LOL!! I love that Halloween is a month-long celebration...it gives me time to make all these neat things and really build the holiday up! I consider October 1st the start of the fall/winter holiday season, too...helps build up the momentum needed for Thanksgiving and the gift-giving season.